Day trip to Hoa Lu

We had to wake up early since our day tour outside of Hanoi was picking us up at 8:00am. We had breakfast at our hostel and then our van was there to get us. It was a 2 1/2 hour drive out to Ninh Binh after which we would head out into the countryside to Hoa Lu (the ancient capital of Vietnam during the 10th century). When we arrived, we visited the Dinh Tien Hoang and Le Dai Hanh dynastic temples. In 968, Dinh Bo Linh declared himself as king of Vietnam. Hoa Lu then existed as the capital for the next 41 years (968 - 1009), of which 12 years was under the Dinh dynasty (King Dinh Tien Hoang) and 29 years later was under the Le dynasty (King Le Dai Hanh). In 1010, King Ly Thai To moved the capital from Hoa Lu to Thang Long – present day Hanoi. Hoa Lu became the old citadel. In Hoa Lu there are now 2 temples have been built on the ground of the old royal palace, one is dedicated to King Dinh Tien Hoang, the other is to King Le Dai Hanh. The temples looked very similar to us and we really couldn't distinguish one from the other.
It seems that all of the area around Hanoi is covered in water, so there is never any shortage of picturesque waterways.

We passed through the main entrance to the temples which was guarded by some fierce lions (and Jessica, haha). The temples themselves were very old but not as grand as we had been expecting. I did like all of the statues they have resembling different animals, those are always interesting to look at. Inside the temples, the local people come to pray to their saints. I was amused that they made offerings of chocopies (like an Oreo) and beer. I guess those are the things that they value, lol. We got a brief history about the temples from our guide who was trying his best to speak English but his accent was so thick we could only understand about 30% of what he said.

Following the temples, we drove from Hoa Lu to Tam Coc. Here we had a really nice buffet style lunch before taking our boat trip through Tam Coc. Ngo Doc is the river which passes through three limestone caves making up Tam Coc. It is a really beautiful way to get views of the mountains and countryside. After some debate, they let the three of us go in a boat together. Our guide was a very old Vietnamese man who spoke no English and really struggled to paddle us down the river. We had to a laugh because so many boats were passing us. The caves were interesting to pass through and it was a fun two hour ride there and back.

When we got back to shore, we were given some bikes so that we could ride through town down to a pagoda that was built into the hillside. This was definitely a different view of Vietnamese life as these people we living in a much more remote area and had a lot less to work with. Their lifestyle reminded me a lot of how people live in Mexico.

When we arrived at the pagoda, there were people there waiting to charge us to park our bikes. We refused to pay to park and after some arguing we walked our bikes back to a restaurant where they let us park them for free. The pagoda was nice, but there wasn't much to it, so we were a little confused as to why this was a tourist attraction. We then climbed the mountain stairs and found that there were many more pagodas built into the hillside. These were really interesting and we ended up liking them much more than the temple we had seen that morning.

After touring the pagodas, we biked back to the van and took the 2 1/2 hour bus ride back to Hanoi. Once back at the hostel, Jessica decided to forgo dinner and just get some sleep because she was a bit jet lagged. Alyssa and I ventured out into town and ended up getting some delicious kebabs from a street vendor which only cost $1.50 USD! I love how cheap the food can be!

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